Minnesotan to 3-D Print New Home in His Garage

Minnesotan to 3-D Print New Home in His Garage

A Minnesota contractor has developed a 3-D printer that he says will be able to create concrete homes — and he'll test it out by building a home in his garage.

Andrey Rudenko has been planning and developing his system for some 20 years, but says that at the time neither computers nor software were able to support his ideas. He returned to his project a couple of years ago, telling 3D Printing Industry it took him about a year to build the printer and create the special concrete mixes for it.

The printer builds walls layer by layer using a concrete and sand mixture that doesn't dry instantly, according to the industry publication, but solidifies "sufficiently for the printing process to work." The layer is 20 mm wide and 5 mm tall. Rudenko says the printer will work even at temperatures slightly above freezing.

While Rudenko's goal is to 3-D print a two-story home of about 1,600 square feet, including accommodations for plumbing, electricity, and insulation, he's still at an experimental stage, currently creating a 160-square-foot castle-styled playhouse that he says will take about a week. While he hopes that his technique will lessen construction workers' exposure to dangerous and even toxic materials, the process will still require manual installation of many components, helping to preserve jobs.